Hi, I'm certain this is a question answered on like a million places on the internet but i really couldn't find one, how does one start to learn to draw
Like sure practice is good but i do not know a single thing about drawing, like, kindergarten level
So what resources should i use to actually get to a point where practicing has any sense
All practice makes sense, the value of the practice just depends on what skills you hope to develop!
And when I teach art, I typically go one of two ways: Art for fun, and art for mastery.
Art for fun is easy, but limited. You can learn what looks pretty and how to imitate pretty things, and enjoy yourself and have a good time. Art for fun focuses on techniques and materials and step-by-step recipes, I'd say, more than cognition.
Art for mastery is hard, and slow, but far more versatile. It's less about your hands and more about your brain, and how you perceive visual input. You have to break down and understand the assumptions you make when you see things so you can rebuild your understanding of what you see in a way that translates to paper.
I made a longass post with examples of exercises you can try here
And the funny thing is, those "kindergarden" skills will REMAIN valuable- once you CAN draw photorealistic images, doing loose and simple doodles is a fantastic exercise, too!
But for now, a few small tips:
Draw real objects from real life. It will hone your skills better and faster than copying 2d images.
When you draw, try not to look at your hands. Glancing is fine, but try to reduce how often you do it.
Dont draw the object, draw what you SEE. This will make sense the more you practice.
Use references, don't just draw from your imagination. If you draw from enough references, eventually your understanding of things will get to the point where your imagination will have enough grounding in realistic concepts to be believable. It'll fill in gaps you aren't yet aware of and teach you how to research what you need on your own. This is how you develop an eye to identify and correct flaws in your own work, and be your own teacher.
Do the boring ass practice shit. Just do it. It sucks and most folks hate it but it will help
Hold onto the first shitty awful attempts you hate to look at because they will make you feel so good when you feel discouraged later and need a reminder of how far you've come
Me: oh yeah, if you think school photography is hard now, try imagining doing this with film.
The new girl: what’s film?
Me: … film. Like… film that goes in a film camera.
New girl: what’s that mean?
Me: … before cameras were digital.
New girl: how did you do it before digital?
Me:… with film? I haven’t had enough coffee for this conversation
Some unused material from the other day
My rlly fun video is up!
People have multiple names sometimes lol
help me break an ongoing silent (mostly) friendly battle between a coworker and i
Honestly “Are Prisons Absolete?” By Angela Davis should be entry level reading to call yourself any sort of leftist or anarchist or whatever. It’s literally under 100 pages and written in v accessible, colloquial language.
And honestly, if you haven’t read it you aren’t allowed to add comments to my prison abolition posts lol
i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.
so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.
As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.
Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.
📺Here is my list:
Proko (Free)
Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard)
Aaron Rutten (free)
BoroCG (free)
Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)
Jesus Conde (free)
Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)
Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price)
SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)
Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)
The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney)
Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)
Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.
📚Here is my list:
The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.
"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.
"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.
"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.
"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.
"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.
"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.
"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.
"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.
Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.
As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are more expensive.
For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.
💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.
Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates)
Procreate ( pay once for $9.99)
Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, ect Free)
PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)
Krita (Free)
mypaint (free)
FireAlpaca (free)
Libresprite (free, for pixel art)
Those are the ones I can recall.
So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.
I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.
Hope this was helpful and have a great day.
Can someone explain to me in like five seconds how to use git, assuming that I know basic shit about coding/command line/whatever but don't know any of the specific terminology related to git. Like every tutorial online is at the same time both over my head and also vastly too basic. Just like. Tell me what it is.
Uh. First tell me its ontology. Is it a program, a standard, a language...? I know that it's for version control. Suppose I wanted to do version control at a piece of code. What do I do. What buttons do I press, on my computer? Tell me these things.
I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard
Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.
Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.
Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.
Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.
SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.
SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.
Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.
Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.
Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.
Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.
Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.
Trying to teach myself to draw, this blog will pretty much be a storage for all the stuff I do. Probably gonna be a lot of Skyrim.
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